Anker has announced the 'Thus' chip, which enables on-device AI functionality. It will be featured in their new Soundcore earphones and will be rolled out to other products in the future.
Anker, a company that manufactures peripherals such as mobile batteries and earphones, has announced ' Things, ' a proprietary AI chip developed to improve audio performance.
Anker THUS chip breaks computing rules to put big AI models on wearable devices | TechRadar
Anker soundcore products to get '150 times more AI power' from new Thus chip - Notebookcheck News
https://www.notebookcheck.net/Anker-soundcore-products-to-get-150-times-more-AI-power-from-new-Thus-chip.1278351.0.html
Anker made its own chip to bring AI to all its products | The Verge
https://www.theverge.com/tech/916463/anker-thus-chip-announcement
'Thus' is being introduced as the world's first neural network in-memory AI audio chip, which is smaller than conventional chips and requires less power to perform complex calculations.
Thus is scheduled to be incorporated into new audio products to be announced at an event on May 21, 2026. According to Anker, it will first be implemented in earphones, where it has been difficult to incorporate an AI chip due to their small size.
Because the chip in earphones is constantly running while being worn, conventional designs had to rely on small neural networks capable of processing hundreds of thousands of parameters. However, Thus has enabled the processing of millions of parameters with an energy-efficient in-memory computing design, significantly improving the computing power needed to handle complex ambient noise and other factors.
In conventional processing methods, memory and processor are physically separated, but Anker has instead adopted a method called in-memory computing, which eliminates energy-intensive processes such as data transmission and reception.
According to Anker, the Thus chip, in addition to its large neural network, features eight microelectromechanical (MEMS) microphones and two bone conduction sensors, enabling powerful noise cancellation and significantly clearer call audio regardless of the environment.
Anker CEO Steven Yang stated, 'All AI chips developed up to this point have stored the model on one side and performed calculations on the other. This meant that the device had to transfer parameters multiple times every time it performed inference. Thus has succeeded in saving energy by integrating the location of the calculation process and the model.'
According to leaked information , the first earphones to feature the Thus chip are likely to be the Liberty 5 Pro Max and Liberty 5 Pro, which are expected to be priced at $229.99 (approximately 36,700 yen) and $169.99 (approximately 27,000 yen) respectively.
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